Obama extends a 'hand of friendship' to the Cuban people in diplomatic statement on Castro's death


"At this time of Fidel Castro's passing, we extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people," President Obama said in a response to the former Cuban president's death on Saturday. "We know that this moment fills Cubans — in Cuba and in the United States — with powerful emotions, recalling the countless ways in which Fidel Castro altered the course of individual lives, families, and of the Cuban nation. History will record and judge the enormous impact of this singular figure on the people and world around him."
The carefully worded comments went on to offer sympathy to Castro's loved ones and express hope for improved future relations between the U.S. and Cuba. As the Cuban people "recall the past and also look to the future," Obama concluded, they "must know that they have a friend and partner in the United States of America."
For more on Castro's Cuba, read The Week's guide to everything you need to know.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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